When Stephen and I started working together, I asked him how he felt about the way his parents had treated him. Even though he wasn't close to either of them, he didn't seem to have any strong feelings about them one way or the other. "I haven't seen my mother in years, and then it is only at family gatherings, where I manage to greet her politely. I don't want anything to do with her. My father and I have a surface relationship. We talk on the phone about twice a month but we don't really say anything of consequence."

After several ~months of working together, Stephen began to get more in touch with some of his anger toward his parents. But this didn’t sit well with him. "I'm responsible for the good and bad about me-not my parents. I pretty much raised myself. It's difficult for me to admit that I'm at the effect of anybody, much less them."

Many people who were neglected or emotionally abused feel the same way Stephen does. They prefer to take responsibility for their lives rather than "blame" their parents. But holding your parents responsible for the way they neglected or abused you and the effects this kind of treatment had on your self-esteem is not the same as blaming them. Blaming keeps us stuck in the problem whereas right­eous anger helps us move through the problem. People who refuse to get angry at their parents tend to sink into self-blame, shame and depression. It is much healthier to allow yourself your righteous anger than to turn that anger on yourself. By getting angry at your parents for their negative treatment, you are also more likely to be able to reject their negative messages that came along with that treatment – negative messages that still influence you today. (Beverly Engel, Healing Your Emotional Self [Wiley, 2006], p. 91).